Article: Thoroughbred racing under fire after investigative reports, cancellation of ‘Luck’

Deaths of racehorses are always shocking and they have always been an inescapable part of the game. Unlike human athletes who suffer serious injuries and can be rehabilitated, horses usually have to be euthanized. But the issue became more emotionally charged than ever after Eight Belles broke down in the 2008 Kentucky Derby. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) turned her death into an indictment of horse racing, blamed her jockey for whipping the filly and called for the rider’s suspension. PETA knows how to make headlines, and it made the deaths during the filming of “Luck” a cause celebre.

The handling of horses in “Luck” had been supervised by the American Humane Association since filming began in 2010. The most recent of the three fatalities had been the result of a freak accident — not gross negligence on anybody’s part. A mare being walked on a dirt path reared up, fell backward, struck her head and died. But this mishap gave PETA the opening to launch a media blitz (saying that the series employed “old, unfit, drugged horses”) and advocate that the Los Angeles district attorney launch a criminal probe into the horses’ deaths. HBO promptly ran up the white flag. Days later, Ray Paulick, editor of the online Paulick Report, published a detailed analysis of the PETA claims and debunked most of them. But by then, he wrote, “The lies had been repeated so often that people believed them.” David Milch, the creator of “Luck,” told an interviewer: “The distortion that took place in order to make those accusations was . . . beyond irresponsibility.”

Coming so soon after the much-publicized “Luck” cancellation, the New York Times article made a stunning impact. People who might question PETA’s claims would surely not question the Times. Yet even though the paper’s investigation was exhaustive, its report was dishonest in one crucial respect.

The Times focused on racing in New Mexico, but readers undoubtedly assumed that the horrendous breakdowns and injuries to jockeys in that state were mirrored in New York, home of the country’s top thoroughbred racing.

However, almost all of the New Mexico horror stories cited by the Times occurred in quarter-horse racing — a different sport, with a different breed, a different style of training and a different ethic. If thoroughbred racing is supposedly the Sport of Kings, quarter-horse racing is the anything-goes sport of cowboys. According to the Times’s own statistics, the seven U.S. tracks with the highest percentage of breakdowns or signs of injury were all ones that offer quarter-horse racing — five of them in New Mexico, where supervision was notoriously lax. Yet the Times never drew a distinction between the two sports and did not even mention the phrase “quarter horse” until the 48th paragraph of its report. Subtract the quarter-horse component from the study and the Times might not have a carnage-laden front page story.

Drugs have been a crucial part of the sport since the 1970s, when the United States became the first major racing nation to allow the use of medications on race day. Horsemen argue that thoroughbreds need drugs such as Butazolidin to withstand the stresses of modern racing, and for decades they have resisted most proposals to curtail the use of medications.

But racing may now have reached a critical point. The sport’s fatality rate is being subjected to unprecedented scrutiny. PETA is a formidable and sometimes ruthless adversary. While people in racing may complain that critics distort the facts, the industry doesn’t have a good answer when those critics say that the misuse of drugs is responsible for killing racehorses. Until racing has a proper response to this charge, it will remain under attack.

For Andrew Beyer’s previous columns go to washingtonpost.com/beyer.